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Saturday, 14 April 2012

Rustic Fruit Cage Continued

I was positively delighted with my initial surge of construction; I had the basic cube shape secured and it all seemed reasonably straight (apart from one corner), considering it had been built by eye and out of sticks.

Now With Added Door Frame!

I’m a believer in being faithful to my original thought (stubborn); rustic was the way and I didn’t want to buy anything unnecessary. Fortunately I had saved a couple of pretty sturdy and true hazel staves, so I bashed these in to form a doorway, they also helped stiffen up the whole structure.

A Beautiful Shirley Ponds Willow

It didn’t take long however, before people started mentioning the door/entrance, which would be needed once the netting was fixed over the framework. Various ideas, such as leather straps or hoops of rope were helpfully suggested.

Allotmet Gate Keeper

In the back of my mind though, I knew that there was no need for hasty decisions. Lack of planning has been the downfall of many idiosyncraticschemes, just as often as lack of knowledge or ability, and the netting won’t even be needed until June. So instead of rushing off to purchase inappropriate hinges at the local hardware shop, I paused, pondered the possibilities and then - I looked at my own garden gate for inspiration.

Rustic Gate Planning

I dug out an old piece of balustrade that I found in my shed as the back edge for the door. I then copied the frame of my garden gate, including diagonals to stop the structure from sagging when hung.

Rustic Joints

It was never going to be exact, so I left all fixing and the opening edge until it was in place. I laid it all up on some decking at home, chopped out where all the joints would go and bought some gate hinges. These were cheap enough for me to bend by hand and I actually wrapped them around the balustrade once it was on site.

Ta Dah!

Finally fitting the door did require a fair bit of innovation (bodging), inspiration (swearing), improvisation (hewing with a penknife) and making it up as I went along; some of the joints are temporarily held in place with garden wire for instance but I was pleasantly surprised by the end result and I believe that Heath Robinson would have been suitably impressed.﻿